The British Competition Authority is forcing Meta to sell Giphy

Because of its impact on competition, the authority has ordered Facebook, now called Meta, to dance back from its acquisition of Giphy.

ON TUESDAY, the UK competition authority announced that the acquisition of the popular GIF engine by Meta would worsen competition among social media platforms and had already knocked out a potential rival in the advertising market as it terminated Giphy’s co-operation on paid advertising at the time of the acquisition.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, repurchased Giphy in 2020 for $400 million. The Company’s original intent was to merge the app with Instagram to make it easier for users to find GIFs relevant to their stories and messages.

Although Meta had initially been promised to give third parties access to Giphy’sscontent in the same way as they had before, it was not convinced by the UK competition authority that at the end of their investigation, it would be best for Mark Zuckerberg to sell the Giphyt to a pre-approved buyer.

The techie announced on Tuesday that he disagreed with the authority’ssdecision and is examining all options, including the possibility of legal redress.

In its investigation material released back in August, the authority wrote that controlling Facebook over Giphy would allow the Company to block access to the service from other social media platforms. Giphy’ssinterface is currently used by non-Meta providers such as Twitter, Snapchat, Apple’ssiMessage, and Slack.

While this isn’t the most bombing deal Meta has made in her career to date, the fact is that this is the first high-value deal she has to quit at the request of a public authority.